The BRICS Astronomy Working Group Hackathon took place from 18–19 October 2023 at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Cape Town. It brought together 27 postgraduate students from all BRICS countries, focusing on clustering astronomical data using machine learning. Participants worked on distinguishing between active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and star-forming galaxies (SFGs) using data from the MeerKAT MIGHTEE survey. … Read More
The Dawn of Data Stars Hackathon took place on 27–28 September 2023 at Rhodes High School, following a five-week Python training program. Around 20 students, who had been learning Python through partnerships with SoloLearn and CodeX, participated in the hackathon focused on emotion classification using machine learning. The challenge allowed students to apply their Python skills in a real-world setting … Read More
The BRICS Intelligent Telescope and Data Network (BITDN), which is a partnership between the Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) and the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) under the BRICS Astronomy programme, hosted its very first regional Hackathon event, which took place at the SAAO on 11-13 October 2022. This event is under the umbrella projects of Hack4dev, which is a partnership that extends to several other … Read More
In March 2022, in celebration of International Women’s day, we organised an Africa focused event and hackathon related to Women in Data Science in Africa. The partners in this event were DARA Big Data, IDIA, SARAO and the OAD. In March 2021, the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) released a Women in Data Science report that used the DARA Big Data … Read More
